Feature Line Extraction from Building Façade Point Clouds by Exploring Spatial Topological Relationship

Abstract

After using a terrestrial laser scanner to acquire building facade point clouds, the extraction of feature lines can simplify the expression of building objects, thereby contributing to the accurate construction of building facade geometric models. To address the problems of missing extraction and low accuracy in existing methods, this study proposes a feature line extraction method for building facade point clouds by exploring the different spatial topological relationship between feature and non‐feature points. The method comprises three steps: feature point extraction, feature line generation, and feature line merging and optimization. First, feature points are extracted using the convex hull distance value and relative angle, as defined in this study. Thereafter, feature points are clustered by combining the random sample consensus and region growing algorithms, and the feature lines are obtained by utilizing the iterative weighted least squares method based on the IGGIII weight function. Finally, the feature lines are merged and optimized using an endpoint search method to improve the discontinuity and missing common endpoints of the original feature lines. The experimental results obtained using simulated and measured point cloud data show that this method can accurately extract feature points, and the extracted feature lines obtained from building facade point clouds have better accuracy and completeness, which is more practical than the existing methods and can be used in many applications such as building facade measurement and urban three‐dimensional modeling.